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What I'm playing this week: Fairway Solitaire

A fun time-wasting card game that's easy to get hooked on

I'm a sucker for catchy puzzle and card games, and one that I just keep coming back to is Fairway Solitaire. The game has been out for a good long while and it isn't the flashiest out there, but I keep finding myself picking it up for 30 minutes here and there whenever I have some time to kill. Despite the naming, you really don't have to know much about golf in order to understand or play the game, but it definitely helps the enjoyment a bit.

Whether you like to hit the links yourself or not, the mechanics of the game are dead simple. While it doesn't really match up with any traditional card game (that I know of, anyway), it's basically a mixed up and reversed version of solitaire. You have a field of cards out with only some exposed, a deck of cards in front of you to play with and different obstacles along the way to clear. Tap on the cards out in the field to play them into your hand, moving through the deck sequentially until the cards are all gone. Pretty simple, right? Well they like to throw a few slices and water hazards in the way, naturally.

You get bonuses from grouping multiple shots together without drawing, catching the pesky gopher on the course and finding "wild cards." The end goal of the game is to finish out each hole in the course (get it, golf metaphors) with as few strokes over par aka cards left in the field as possible. The sound effects and banter of the golf announcers are fun and keep you entertained in this relatively basic and mindless game, and sometimes that's just what you need when you pull out your phone to kill some time.

Even better, the game's free to play through a whole heap of courses, and the full unlock is just $0.99. Quite a steal if you ask me.